Him se yldesta andswarode; werodes wisa, wordhord onleac.
"That noblest of men answered him; the leader of the warrior band unlocked his wordhoard."

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

An Open Letter to David Horowitz

Dear Mr. Horowitz,

I am writing to you about your recent book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics. I find the book a travesty, completely unfit for print in any civilized nation, for the simple reason that I am not included on the list.

I'm way more dangerous than any of those guys. Can you honestly tell me you'd rather confront me in a dark alley than Noam Chomsky? I mean, the man's name is homophonous with "gnome"! He wouldn't last a day in prison.

Or Michael Berube? The man obviously has masculinity issues -- why else would he put that hockey photo of Gilbert on his blog? Sure, he might high-stick you, but I can kill with my bare hands. Plus, he puts an accent mark in his name ... there's just no call for that. Now an umlaut is masculine, but an accent mark...?

What about "Grover Furr?" Everyone knows that Grover Furr is a fictional character owed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and he got displaced by Elmo. ELMO, for Pete's sake! How could someone defeated by Elmo be dangerous?

Let's face it, the list is full of geriatrics who couldn't make a shiv from a broken piece of metal if their lives depended on it. How could you overlook me when you've included the entire supporting cast of Cocoon? Listen, there's a math professor of my acquaintance who has a blackbelt in hapkido and regularly kicks my butt when sparring. Now THAT's dangerous!

Please amend your list to include me and my math professor colleague. Also, please note that if you ever come out with a "101 Best Dressed Academics" list, my bow-tie and tweed combo surely earns me a spot in that list too.

6 comments:

Hilarious! You will certainly have my vote, if the process of nominating dangerous academics ever becomes democratic.

Since you bring up the dapper attire: it's people like you with your tweed 'n' bow tie combos who make those of us who haven't earned a chili pepper at ratemyprofessor.com realize what we are up against.

It's funny how medievalists run into each other. I came across your blog's link on another medieval blog, "In the Middle," which I was linked to through the Med. Acad. Amer.'s grad listserver. Small World (I wonder what David Lodge would say about academic bloggers?).

I thought you should know that I read Anglo-Saxon poetry for my History of Poetic Form class the other day (being that no one else knew old english)- it was such a hit, that I was asked for an encore performance! (and an impromptu reading of 14th C "Blacksmiths"). As I'm sure you know from personal experience, medievalists can be a bundle of fun at parties: just a few drinks and let the random recitation begin!

UVA is great, though medieval grad students are a rarity among the sea of Pre-moderns and Victorians(we often refer to ourselves as "the few, the proud"). Hope all things are well at Troy. Take care!